development of

ballet

The
Ballet comique launched the species known as
ballet de cour, in which the monarchs themselves participated. The idealized dances represented the supreme order that France itself, suffering from internal wars, lacked so badly. The steps were those of the social dances of the times, but scholars became aware of how these native materials might be used to propagate the Greek...

...for perfecting of their arts, with unifying the rules of dance training, and with issuing licenses to dancing instructors. Though the nobility continued for some time to participate in the
ballets de cour, and Louis himself danced in them until 1669, the dance became more and more the province of highly trained specialists.

theatrical music

When Catherine de Médicis married King Henry II of France in 1533, she brought from Italy a taste for entertainments in which dancing was prominent. Her encouragement established the
court ballet (
ballet de cour) as the foundation of classical ballet, the source of a new theatrical identity for music and a precursor of French opera. As a unified blend of poetry, music, and...

relation to masque

...or masked ball where the guests mingled with the actors. A nondramatic form, the
trionfo, or triumph, evolved from these Italian court masques and, arriving in France, gave rise to the
ballet de cour and the more spectacular masquerade.

type of choreographic form

In the 16th century, dance masters at the French court so organized the floor patterns and theatrical and artistic contexts of their social dances as to initiate a choreographic form, the
ballet de cour. In the two centuries that followed, the gap between social dance and theatrical dance widened until ballet in the 19th century achieved a basically independent vocabulary.

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